Why should anyone have more money than anyone else?

[MacCruiskeen]

There have been rent strikes, but they were always temporary. They should be permanent.

All landlords are vampires. They feed on human blood.

[blanc]

I have long suspected that the needs of the population could be catered for if 3 hours of work per day or thereabouts were given by all able bodied persons, defining work as productive activity you don't particularly choose to be involved in. (So, maybe you so love to paint pictures you will work 60 hours a week, but that doesn't count - the 15 you might give slopping white emulsion on plaster in the housing development would). It could probably be less, and we should need to restructure education and training so as to accommodate such a scenario.

I watched the rich kids video with some interest. Though half heartedly searching for their own little productive niche, it was remarkable that no amount of contact with ordinary folk had seemed enough to make them seriously consider doing something world changing, like providing housing for the homeless or funding medical care for deprived sectors. They only seemed to consider what would bring kudos for being a dilettante. I guess that's why they'll stay rich.

[Sounder]

So say someone has a property and they have to move so they rent it out. The renter, soon falls behind and in fact lives in the place for nearly a year for next to no money while the 'owner' pays on a contract that is not so easily broken. You know, one with a banker who actually has the power to enforce said contract.

Now tell me again. Who's feeding on whose blood?

Until people find a deeper well for self-motivation this world of money and contracts will have to do.

If people spent as much effort working as they spend trying to get out of work, the work would easily be done. But people are lazy. Also it's living in a magical world to think that food and shelter might appear, right in front of you, whenever you need it, as if it's coming out of nowhere, rather than through the efforts other humans, that deserve respect and compensation for their work.

[Nordic]

My dad rented out the family farmhouse for a while, for free, just so someone would be there to take care of the place. That was the deal, you could live there for free - I think he charged them 100 a year or something, just so he could make a legit contract out of it -- and the deal was just make sure the pipes don't freeze in the winter and that nobody vandalizes the place and if there's a leak in the roof, let him know and he'll fix it, that sort of thing. He figured he'd be helping someone out who needed a place, and they could use it to grow crops or run cattle if they wanted. Pretty good deal, right?

Well the people who rented it completely trashed the place. By the time it was over, there were broken walls, floors, ceilings, and the cellar was filled with dirty diapers. I mean FILLED with dirty diapers. No joke.

I like how this thread seems to be about how wonderful everybody is .... except for those people who have money. Yeah, people are ALL just ANGELS until they get a few bucks and then they turn into complete assholes.

A lot of people from all walks of life are degenerate assholes. That's just how it is.

People need to be taken care of. People who can't work should be taken care of. Everybody should be taken care of. But there's some huge flaw in the human mind, where if people are given something for free, they tend to destroy it. Like they've destroyed the planet.

We're here, each in our individual lives, to figure out this kind of stuff. For ourselves. We are, in many ways, God's children, and we sure as hell act like children most of the time.

Most people never grow up.

[Stephen Morgan]

shit. i just wrote a brilliant response to barracuda, and my freaking blackberry lost it. damn that sucks.

okay. my main point was that filmmaking is hardly environmentally unfriendly, relative to almost all other commercial endeavors where something is actually manufactured. i mean, compare filmmaking, especially computer generated filmmaking, to, say aluminum mining, or mountaintop removal coal mining, or even the manufacture of all those giant plastic toys at toys r us. it's pretty silly to make the claim you did.

One can't watch films without electricity and telecommunications industries with which to illegally download the films, and electronic equipment to play them.

i agree with many of barracuda's points, but he's getting hung up on his apparent hatred of the movie industry and the price of tickets.

so let's pick an example of someone i can only assume is universally loved and admired here -- margaret atwood. let's say she got ten million bucks for the movie rights to "the handmaids tale". shouldn't she be entitled to this? and what if the movie version had made a billion dollars? shouldn't she have been entitled to a big piece of this?

Would quibble with "universally", there. But, no, she shouldn't be entitled to anything beyond what someone will pay her to write it. The whole idea of income from ownership, of shares or intellectual property rights or interest or rents or patents or whatever, is abhorrent. If a total lack of intellectual property gave us the industrial revolution, Shakespear, Milton and so on while the modern intellectual property system gave us Monsanto, Michael Bay films and Margaret Atwood, I know what I prefer.

that's what i'm getting at.

at the same time i agree with the whole notion of "from each according to his abilities, to each ac9ording to his needs". and then there are people we need to do the dirty work, and it's those people who should be well paid for their time!

That's not Atwood, then.

[Hammer of Los]

(F)ilmmaking is hardly environmentally unfriendly, relative to almost all other commercial endeavors where something is actually manufactured. I mean, compare filmmaking, especially computer generated filmmaking to, say, aluminum mining, or mountaintop removal coal mining, or even the manufacture of all those giant plastic toys at toys r us.

edited

I wonder how much oil and related products go into the production of plastic toys?

I guess we have lived through an era of wonderfully abundant and cheap toys, that will likely come to an end.

I wonder if the price of plastic toy collectables will rise a lot?

[Searcher08]

My dad rented out the family farmhouse for a while, for free, just so someone would be there to take care of the place. That was the deal, you could live there for free - I think he charged them 100 a year or something, just so he could make a legit contract out of it -- and the deal was just make sure the pipes don't freeze in the winter and that nobody vandalizes the place and if there's a leak in the roof, let him know and he'll fix it, that sort of thing. He figured he'd be helping someone out who needed a place, and they could use it to grow crops or run cattle if they wanted. Pretty good deal, right?

Well the people who rented it completely trashed the place. By the time it was over, there were broken walls, floors, ceilings, and the cellar was filled with dirty diapers. I mean FILLED with dirty diapers. No joke.

I like how this thread seems to be about how wonderful everybody is .... except for those people who have money. Yeah, people are ALL just ANGELS until they get a few bucks and then they turn into complete assholes.

A lot of people from all walks of life are degenerate assholes. That's just how it is.

People need to be taken care of. People who can't work should be taken care of. Everybody should be taken care of. But there's some huge flaw in the human mind, where if people are given something for free, they tend to destroy it. Like they've destroyed the planet.

We're here, each in our individual lives, to figure out this kind of stuff. For ourselves. We are, in many ways, God's children, and we sure as hell act like children most of the time.

Most people never grow up.

One of the best NLP therapists, whose fast and effective and permanent interventions would cost thousands of dollars in a coaching setting, was asked by her sister to do a 'Peanuts' style the Psychiatrist is IN stall for $10 for 15 minutes therapy to raise money for her sisters charity. She said the people who saw her that day were the least engaged, most argumentative and entitled clients she saw before or since.

Here is a thought - in terms of a dialogue between progressives and libertarians...

There seems to be something around finding what people actually need - for example when I was unemployed, the ONE thing I needed was a Prince2 project management certification - regardless of experience, it had become the essential certificate. I would have been happy to pay TRIPLE the fee back from my job! Instead I was sent on a mandatory course on basic office skills How to use Microsoft Word for Beginners <weeps>

Around unemployment, fill a job that needs filling AND don't make the person worse off (Poverty Trap) because they work.

and put all lobbyists into a woodchipper. Headfirst

[Luposapien]

If I recall correctly from my brief excursion into anthropology, on average, folks in hunter-gatherer societies (which account for the large bulk of humanity's evolution as a species) tend to actively "work" around 19 hours per week doing things directly related to acquiring food and other necessities. For the most part, people who are "lazy" are not bad or damaged people, they just are not evolutionarily suited to working 40 plus hours a week in order to produce tons of shit nobody really needs in order to stuff money into the pockets of someone else (who doesn't really need it). I suspect that much of the "laziness" we see in our society is a subconscious expression of rebellion against an inherently unjust social order. Are there people who will sit back and take advantage of the hard work of others no matter what kind of society they live in? Of course there are. But I really don't believe they are the majority. Most people will actively look for things to do in order to keep themselves from going crazy. Inactivity runs just as counter to our instinctual drives as does toiling day-in day-out.

[Jeff]

For the most part, people who are "lazy" are not bad or damaged people, they just are not evolutionarily suited to working 40 plus hours a week in order to produce tons of shit nobody really needs in order to stuff money into the pockets of someone else (who doesn't really need it). I suspect that much of the "laziness" we see in our society is a subconscious expression of rebellion against an inherently unjust social order.

You've reminded me of my favourite passage from The Coming Insurrection:

Contrary to what has been repeated to us since childhood, intelligence doesn't mean knowing how to adapt - or if that is a kind of intelligence, it's the intelligence of slaves. Our inadaptability, our fatigue, are only problems from the standpoint of what aims to subjugate us. They indicate rather a starting point, a meeting point, for new complicities. They reveal a landscape more damaged, but infinitely more shareable, than all the fantasy lands this society maintains for its own purposes.

We are not depressed; we're on strike.

[American Dream]

OK, so some people do want to do jobs that most people don't like. Would this therefore obviate the need for any special inducements in an economy that was shaped by us, the 99%, rather than by market forces and/or state authority?

When I imagine collective living on a smaller scale, I imagine that we would all have to strictly split the more disliked tasks snd/or provide extra inducements. Otherwise, I can easily imagine that we would have a big problem getting certain jobs reliably done...

[undead]

There have been rent strikes, but they were always temporary. They should be permanent.

All landlords are vampires. They feed on human blood.

My landlord is an anarchist who spends all his time gardening and doing community service. He used to work but now he lives off of his rental properties and his garden. He believes that the world would be better off without money, and that everyone should have an equal share. I agreed with him. I don't feel bad about paying him rent because he is my friend and the rent is really cheap.

Besides envy, jealousy, and laziness, there is also a lot of bitterness among radical leftists that tends to turn off people who would otherwise be sympathetic.

[undead]

OK, so some people do want to do jobs that most people don't like. Would this therefore obviate the need for any special inducements in an economy that was shaped by us, the 99%, rather than by market forces and/or state authority?

When I imagine collective living on a smaller scale, I imagine that we would all have to strictly split the more disliked tasks snd/or provide extra inducements. Otherwise, I can easily imagine that we would have a big problem getting certain jobs reliably done...

How good of you to imagine such a realistic situation. Of course there needs to be extra incentives or collective sharing for odious tasks. Notice in the account of the guys who enjoyed coal mining, they considered themselves the "aristocracy of the working class" because they were skilled workers... that were paid better than other unskilled workers. If they were getting paid the same as, say, a janitor, do you think they would still have that attitude? I doubt it.

[barracuda]

If they were getting paid the same as, say, a janitor, do you think they would still have that attitude? I doubt it.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median wage for miners, or, in their nomenclature, "excavating and loading machine and dragline operators" is $37,620 working 46.6 average weekly hours. And at least here in Northern California, the median wage for a janitor is $34,074. Most janitors around here probably put in a 40 hour week, though, so I'd call it a push. Of course, more highly trained machine operators can make more money, just as I assume more technically proficient maintenance workers and supervisors can make more money as well. Anyway, it's hard to view the salary difference here as the determinative factor in terms of pride in one's job, especially when it comes to thumbing one's nose at the local bourgeoisie like Richard Burton's coal miners. But perhaps your image of janitors vis-a-vis coal miners is somewhat skewed by factors other than just comparative compensatory wages.

[norton ash]

Two versions of the Canadian national anthem. Which one's dimmer and less soul-crushing...



It's a working man l am
And I've been down under ground
And I swear to God if l ever see the sun
Or for any length of time
I can hold it in my mind
I never again will go down under ground

At the age of sixteen years
Oh, he quarrels with his peers
Who vowed they'd never see another one
In the dark recess of the mines
Where you age before your time
And the coal dust lies heavy on your lungs

It's a working man l am
And I've been down under ground
And I swear to God if l ever see the sun
Or for any length of time
I can hold it in my mind
I never again will go down under ground

At the age of sixty four
Oh, he'll greet you at the door
And he'll gently lead you by the arm
Through the dark recess of the mines
Oh, he'll take you back in time
And he'll tell you of the hardships that were had



I get up at seven, yeah
And I go to work at nine
I got no time for livin'
Yes, I'm workin' all the time

It seems to me
I could live my life
A lot better than I think I am
I guess that's why they call me
They call me the working man

They call me the working man
I guess that's what I am

I get home at five o'clock
And I take myself out a nice, cold beer
Always seem to be wonderin'
Why there's nothin' goin' down here

Well, they call me the working man
I guess that's what I am

[Stephen Morgan]

I like how this thread seems to be about how wonderful everybody is .... except for those people who have money. Yeah, people are ALL just ANGELS until they get a few bucks and then they turn into complete assholes.

The cosmos doesn't rain mooney down on people for being virtuous.

People get to be rich by being scum. Your tragedy of the commons is bullshit.